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James Brandon Lewis' Red Lily Quintet: Sparrow
by Chris May
Here is the opening track from James Brandon Lewis' Red Lily Quintet's For Mahalia, With Love (TAO Forms, 2023), a celebration of the music of Mahalia Jackson, remaining true to its original essence but framing it in a jazz context. Not since Oded Tzur's Isabela (ECM, 2022) has such an exalted tenor saxophone-led album come along. ...
Ruth Goller: Below My Skin
by Chris May
Since the mid noughties, Italian-born, British-based bassist Ruth Goller has been one of the backline-going-on-frontline heroes of British jazz, starting with her work with Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down and continuing through an honour roll of convention-defying bands. “Below My Skin," on which Goller is joined by drummer Tom Skinner (Sons Of Kemet, The Smile), ...
Pharoah Sanders: Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt
by Chris May
This little beauty, all sixteen minutes of it, is the opening track of Pharoah Sanders' first own-name masterpiece, Tauhid (Impulse!), recorded in 1966, released in 1967, and the blueprint for Sanders' style of astral jazz. Remarkably, many jazz enthusiasts, including Sanders fans, seem not to have heard Tauhid--and one leading tenor saxophonist on London's alternative jazz ...
Jaimie Branch: Take Over The World
by Chris May
From Fly Or Die Fly Or Die Fly Or Die ((World War)) (International Anthem, 2023), the final album recorded by trumpeter and composer Jaimie Branch, who, in addition to her sui generis genius as a musician, took an exemplary stand against the advancing tide of hate-fuelled evil which will hit the fan when the 2024 US ...
Arthur Blythe: Lenox Avenue Breakdown
by Chris May
One of the most egregiously underestimated albums in jazz history, alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe's Lenox Avenue Breakdown was released on vinyl by Columbia in 1979 and on CD by Columbia (Japan) in 1995 and Koch Jazz in 1998. That's it bar a dodgy fourfer. Blythe fronts a septet completed by flautist James Newton, tubaist Bob Stewart, ...
Champagne Dub: Rainbow
by Chris May
Rainbow is not a jazz album, not in a million light years, but it is a blast, and the two core members of Champagne Dub are British jazz-and-beyond musicians who have made careers out of going off piste. Good reasons for lending an ear. The renegade twosome are Max Hallett (aka Betamax), who ...
Joel Ross: Nublues
by Chris May
Planning this, his fourth album as leader on Blue Note, Joel Ross set out to connect with a wider audience, to make things a little easier for listeners. The vibraphonist and composer says that, with hindsight, his previous work for the label has been too focused on the musicians in his band and rife with devices ...
The Complete Obscure Records Collection 1975-1978
by Chris May
The first ever CD box set gathering the complete 10-album catalogue of Brian Eno's Obscure Records has been released by Italian-based label Dialogo. In the mid to late 1970s, Obscure gave a platform to some of the most significant young British composers of experimental music, together with a few Americans. In a quiet way spectacularly successful, ...
